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Spotify, Chick-Fil-A & digital data driven value chains

Spotify skipped the big name Wall Street investment banks to publicly list shares of the company directly.

Door, a real estate startup, allows homeowners to sell homes through their online platform for a flat rate instead of the standard 6 percent commission with an agent.

Chick-Fil-A announced plans to launch a meal kit product available at restaurants so consumers can skip a subscription service or a stop at the grocery store.

Value chains of all types are reorganizing to be digital & data driven.

In meat and poultry, the retail space is seeing it in spades as retailers navigate the omni-channel challenge to compete with the likes of Amazon and Alibaba.

What about further up the meat and poultry value chain? How are those supply chains reorganizing? How will they look different in 2 to 10 years?

Selling meat without traders? Transacting via smart contracts driven off block chain? Ask a lab meat company and they’d suggest we could have meat without farmers, but let’s be real who even wants to live in that kind of world?

Digital, data driven value chains are here and meat and poultry companies throughout the value chain must navigate a (likely) messy evolution.

What will be the result of the evolution? Four hypotheses:

Decisions made from real time data.

Counter parties are partners, not foes.

Margin increases as value chains shorten.

Data flows freely throughout the value chain, from farmer to packer to retailer, often to consumer.

Contrast that likely evolution with the current state where intuition and assumptions govern decisions, pen and paper (ok Excel) handle many processes, and a transactional fight for margin is not uncommon.

There’s a long, messy road up ahead as the meat and poultry value chain sophisticates, but those who get out in front and lead stand to win big.